


Fortitude

by Hagar



Category: Person of Interest (TV), Tarot (Divination Cards)
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, F/F, Fanart, Tarot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-25 12:49:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6195733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hagar/pseuds/Hagar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Oh my love; oh my darling, my precious, my soul. What am I without you, but a rose made of stone?</i>
</p><p>Fic inspired by <i>Gole Sangam</i>, with complementary art, a re-interpretation of the traditional imagery of the tarot major Fortitude, in the style of a stained-glass window.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Stone Flower

**Author's Note:**

  * For [willowcabins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/willowcabins/gifts).



> With love and gratitude to N., who explained to me the importance of _Gole Sangam_ to Diasporic Persians; and L., who art-beta'ed.

In another story, a king and a princess and two knights are at war with a demon. In that story, the demon is about to slaughter everyone - as demons are wont to do - so one knight - the knight whom they princess loves - kisses her on the mouth to silence her protests then pushes her back and charges forward into the hellfire, even as the princess screams.

The princess screams, and screams, then keeps on screaming because even when they _do_ go back, they cannot find the knight’s body. The princess and the king’s knight keep searching. Far and wide they search, tearing through whole kingdoms as they do, yet they cannot find their friend, the knight, who’d saved the world, whom the princess loves.

War goes on. The princess doesn’t. Oh, she steps back from the search, eventually, after God herself commands it so; but in her hollowed-out heart the princess never stops screaming and she will scream for all eternity, if she never finds her knight, nor does she return to her. There is no version of the story in which the princess would’ve stopped grieving for her knight, were she dead. It’s the other knight who realizes the truth: that when the princess rises from her grief it isn’t because she’s moved on. No. It’s because she’s realized they’d’ve found the knight’s mutilated body already, had the demon wanted to mock them.

It’s what demons do, after all: they kill and they torture, they revel in their power. If this demon hadn’t rubbed their noses in their knight’s dead, mutilated body it must because she _isn’t dead._ It makes that much more sense: demons torture and revel in their power, and what greater demonstration of its power then to corrupt the knight that God deems most precious, what greater torture for the princess then to wonder which empty-eyed demonic beast is the one she loves?

In another story the princess soothes the dragon, captures it, and reclaims the human inside - the knight, God’s precious, who saved the world, whom the princess loves. This is how it happens except it never does and never will, because this is not that story.

Life is not that story. Life is no story at all. There’s no author pulling at the strings; love doesn’t conquer all; there is a God, but she’s the one trapped and sealed away, and not the demon. Root knows better than to believe things make sense that don’t. She wouldn’t have lived long enough to find the Machine, if she hadn’t known the difference of fantasy from belief; neither would she have lived that long if she didn’t know that fantasy is a human need as basic as food and water and breath. It’s how she goes on living now, too, soothing herself to sleep each night by dreaming herself up as a sorceress princess who holds her hand out to restrain the dragon who secretly is the one she loves, trapped by an evil spell.

One day, Root knows, she will stand in front of an empty-eyed nightmare and it will be a dream come true. She doesn’t know how to restrain a dragon, though. It’s Sameen who knows that secret, and she -

Root tosses and turns. _Oh, my love,_ cries out her heart. _Oh my darling, my precious, my soul. What am I without you, but a rose made of stone?_

 


	2. Stone Flower




End file.
